Scripture Reading
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Sermon Text
Prejudice
I was quite disturbed by the comment Donald Trump made about the judge Gonzalo Curiel of United States district court. Donald Trump said that a Mexican American judge in a case involving trump university was biased against him because of his heritage ethnicity. In other words, the ethnicity of the judge is the cause for the bias. It doesn’t matter what that person is, if that person has certain ethnicity, he or she cannot do the good job. Judge Curiel or was born in Indiana, he was born American, of course, he has a Mexican heritage and he fought against the, drug lord of Mexico. Now, he’s always surrounded by bodyguards, so wherever he goes, he has to go with a bodyguard because, the head of the drug dealers ordered people to kill him. That’s why he always has to have body guards. He risked his life for the peace and justice of the country, and he’s a good judge, but as long as he has a certain ethnicity, his ethnicity, will not make him a competent judge. That is a blatant racism. As a speaker, Paul N’Dri in the nation’s highest ranking Republican said it was a textbook definition of racism. I just can’t believe how a person who says blatant racism can get so many votes, that’s the kind of a world that we live in North America. I was thinking of, my own context in our church. We have a Korean’s born in North America. They’re excellent in what they do. They’re smart, they’re all this culture, and also they know the language well enough, and there are maybe some judges in the future, but as Donald Trump said, or did many people in this country may question theater ability because of their ethnicity, prejudice. It is a strange thing. It really blinds our eyes, as long as we have prejudice, reason doesn’t work and we human beings easily fall into our own prejudice. When we are victims of prejudice, all our logics and reasons will become powerless and useless and these reasons will be only used to legitimize and justify their own prejudice and these reasons and logic will drive them only further into their own deeper prejudice. In other words, the prejudice incapacitates the power of reason. God gave us reason to know the truth, not to justify your own bias. Narrow-mindedness and prejudice God gave us reasons so that we can think and we can discern what it is; what is the truth? So when you don’t use reasoning that way. Then you’re committing sins. As you look at this passage, you see St Paul experienced complete healing from his own prejudice in Christ. Listen to what he said.
Find Exile of Prejudice and Freedom in Christ
This is actually scripture passage for today, which I forgot. Again, there is no longer Jew or Greek. There is no longer slave or free. There is no longer male and female for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. This was spoken 2000 years ago by an Asian man. Freedom from prejudice, Greek or Jew doesn’t mean just the race is to also talk, he’s talking about the religion. His message was to eradicate the racial and religious prejudice, socio-economic inequality, gender discrimination, and to promote tolerance. Even in today’s standard. It was a very bold statement, and he found that in Christ, he found this truth in Christ because he was a victim of prejudice because of his religiosity, whatever that may be, the religion or morality or self righteous or whatever. If that makes you a person of prejudice, then your reason doesn’t work anymore. You’re reason only justifies your prejudice. Paul experienced tremendous freedom in Christ. It’s not that all of a sudden he decided, okay, this is the right thing to do. No, he found this freedom in Christ. He found his healing in Christ. To me, that is freedom. Doing whatever you want. It’s not freedom. What Paul experienced was true freedom. That is what true conversion looks like, on people talk about conversion, true conversion is true healing from this kind of prejudice. Paul’s conversion was not religious conversion. Paul’s conversion was not moral conversion. Paul’s conversion was not ideological conversion, these convergence are easy, you can just make decision on that because Paul’s conversion was spiritual conversion, and through the spiritual conversion, he’s eyes which used to be blind because of his prejudice are completely open and was able to see
Converge to overcome Prejudice
that’s true convergence. That’s true change, only in true conversion, we can overcome our own prejudice, and then our reason will come alive, and we can expand the horizons of our understanding. Until then, we’ll just live in our own prejudice. When this happens, we get new vision for ourselves and for the world. We’ll be able to overcome our own fear, we’ll be able to overcome our insatiable desire and hunger for power and domination. We don’t need to have that anymore. We can truly build unity and we can build a better world together. We won’t build a world where one percent of the population uses 99 percent of the money, we won’t build that kind of world. That’s North America just last week, New York Times reported one percent of American population owns 99 percent of the money. We won’t build that kind of world. Just imagine it. For example, let’s say here is about 100 people here. Out there, their are 100 Kimbap. One person is with 99 Kimbap, and with one piece of Kimbap 99 people have to share this. Can you say that’s a sane world? That’s insane, but that’s the kind of world we live in. As long as we have prejudice, all our reasons will not operate, will not work.
Build a World of Respect, Dignity, and Equality
We’ll build a world where everyone is treated with respect, dignity and equality. I went to a seminar last Tuesday, presented by Joe Park. It is about the mental health for the Korean community and all the came and their doctor know, who is used to be a who used to teach at Cambridge and he said the infant mortality rate is a very good indicator of determining socio economic status of a group. And he said the African American in the United States has higher infant mortality rate than that of Bangladesh. And the sad thing is the mortality rate of Canadian abroad gentle originals is even higher than African Americans. Yeah, living in a such a nice world, but they are also people who are suffering in this heaven like world utopia kind of world. We are living in a world where prejudice is uncritically accepted that was not the vision of Jesus Christ. And Paul saw the true vision of Jesus Christ and dad is that there is no longer chew or a Greek. There is no longer slave or free. There is no longer male and female for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And that is a legacy we should carry on.
Maybe all are saying, timothy, people should memorize this. It’s not that difficult. It’s not that long. Maybe we all memorize and always keep that in mind in whatever we do. I hope that we all become the leaders to eradicate the prejudice around us and build unity and harmony.
The Lord’s Parable
a few weeks ago I preached on good Shepherd. Jesus gave us that parable, good Shepherd. In that story, there are three kinds of people we see, one is a thief, and the other is hired hands, they are paid to do whatever they were supposed to do, but once danger comes they flee, and finally, there are good shepherds. Take care of sheep and who will even sacrifice for the sheep. I wonder what kind of people there are in the world. Maybe there are thieves out there, who only take profit all the time, maybe 99 percent of money and there are higher men working crazy just to make a living, but beyond that they don’t care, but there are also good shepherd who loves humanity, who love this world, who will do anything to make this world better. Sometimes even sacrifice themselves to make this world better than our living just for themselves. They’re not living, robbing other people. they are living for other people. Jesus called us to be good shepherd. Not thiefs, not higher than, but good shepherd. This time I’d like to challenge you to think through what kind of life am I living? Am I just hired hands? Or am I… do I want to live like the good shepherd helping others, making this world better place? Let us pray.
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